Auctions and Collections

▪ 1995

Introduction

ART Auctions AND SALES

      The 1993-94 auction season was dominated by the sales of celebrity collections and the exorbitant prices paid by admiring fans for artistic mementos. Princess Gloria von Thurn und Taxis of Germany, couturier Hubert de Givenchy, singer Barbra Streisand, and a 96-year-old former Chinese warlord, Zhang Xueliang (Chang Hsüeh-liang), were all delighted with the profits from the sales of their collections. The estates of U.S. millionaires Peter Sharp, famed for his Old Master collection, and Wendell Cherry, who favoured Impressionists and French furniture, also attracted feverish bidders. A buyer's market ensured that prices would not rise significantly. Many of the artworks offered for auction failed to sell. Auction houses, however, recorded a rise in seasonal turnover. Sotheby's turnover increased 19% and Christie's 14%. The Paris auction rooms recorded a 5.5% increase in turnover in the first six months of the year compared with the same period of 1993.

      For once, profits were not dominated by prices for expensive pictures, whether Impressionists or Old Masters. For these works Sotheby's and Christie's reported level sales, although Impressionist paintings declined from the previous year. The decorative arts enjoyed buoyant sales, including strong performances for English and French furniture, European ceramics, and Chinese works of art, especially snuff bottles.

      The growing number of private collectors buying directly from auction also increased. Traditionally, dealers bought at "wholesale" levels, but in recent years they had been joined at auction by private collectors who paid "retail" prices for furniture and pictures.

      The first sensational auction of the season was Sotheby's 10-day sale of surplus furnishings from Schloss St. Emmeram, the Thurn and Taxis palace in Regensburg, Germany. The 6,596 lots sold for DM 31,417,712 (DM 1=$0.65), some 60% over forecast. Other princely families, including the Liechtensteins, Württemburgs, and Wittelsbachs, attended the sale hoping to embellish the furnishings of their castles, but the wealthy bourgeoisie outbid the royalty. A walnut wardrobe of c. 1720 commanded DM 80,500, three times the original estimate. A French Empire hound with an ormolu clock in its mouth fetched DM 29,900, six times more than expected.

      Christie's Givenchy sale in Monaco was a rousing success and made F 155,533,200 (F 1=$0.19). The couturier had devoted 15 years to impeccably decorating his Paris apartment in 18th-century taste; he preferred the Baroque magnificence of the early years of the century and had acquired many pieces of royal provenance. It was the grandest furniture sale in many years and attracted acquisitive millionaires.

      Muhammad Mahdi at-Tajir, former London ambassador of the United Arab Emirates and silver collector par excellence, paid F 19,980,000 for a silver chandelier designed in the 1730s by William Kent for King George II. It was a record price for silver. A Louis XIV library table by André Charles Boulle made F 18,870,000. The sale underscored a rise in the price for the best French furniture. A boulle bookcase, which was made by Étienne Levasseur in the 1780s and had sold at auction in 1982 for $209,000, made F 11.1 million, while a pair of Rococo ormolu candelabra supported by dragons made F 5.3 million after having sold in 1986 for $363,000.

      The real connoisseurs' event in the field of 20th-century decorative arts was the sale of 143 pieces of furniture, designs, and drawings by Charles Rennie Mackintosh, the Scottish architect and designer. The items had been amassed over 50 years by Thomas Howarth, professor emeritus of architecture at the University of Toronto. A 1904 ebonized writing cabinet inlaid with mother-of-pearl brought £793,500 (£1=$1.59), the highest auction price ever recorded for 20th-century furniture, while a high, oval-backed oak chair fetched £ 309,500. Howarth made £2,270,000.

      In April a Sotheby auction of Chinese paintings in Taiwan demonstrated that Asian buyers were just as enamoured of celebrity offerings as Westerners. Sotheby's attempted to sell the collection anonymously, but news soon leaked out. The 700-odd paintings, dating from the 10th century to around 1980, had been collected by Zhang Xueliang, a famous Chinese warlord who was held under house arrest in Taiwan for almost 40 years after he attempted to arrest Chiang Kai-shek in 1936. Every lot sold, and the collection brought NT$132,895,500 ($5,035,000), three times Sotheby's high estimate. A Sung dynasty painting of a spray of peach blossom made NT$16,550,000 ($627,000), four times the forecast price.

      The widow of the U.S. millionaire Wendell Cherry, who founded the Humana hospital group and was one of the great art collectors of the 1980s, made Sotheby's summer by consigning paintings and furniture. Two of her Post-Impressionist paintings provided the top two picture prices—$11,662,500 for Gustav Klimt's "Lady with a Fan" and $7,592,500 for John Singer Sargent's "Spanish Dancer." The furnishings from Cherry's New York apartment, mainly French 18th century, made $13.7 million, including a Louis XIV boulle library table and filing cabinet, which commanded $2.2 million.

      In the field of modern art, the best results were provided by a collection formed in the post-World War II years by H. Gates Lloyd and his wife, Lallie. One of David Smith's most famous sculptures, "Cubi V," made $4.1 million and Mondrian's "Composition No. 8" sold for $5.6 million. Both works made about double the projected estimate.

      Specialty pieces and rarities also brought handsome profits. A 3,000-year-old Assyrian relief carving from the palace of Ashurnasirpal II at Nimrud sold for £ 7.7 million to Japanese dealer N. Horiuchi. The piece, which depicted a bearded divinity anointing a eunuch's back, had been rediscovered under a coat of whitewash in the tuckshop of an English public school. A Greek pottery water jar of the 6th century BC decorated with a scene of Hero battling the sea monster Ketos sold for £2.2 million; an Islamic bronze lion of the 11th or 12th century made £2 million; a 5.8-m (19-ft) Louis XV Savonnerie carpet, emblazoned with the royal arms of France, made £ 1,321,500 and established a record price for any carpet; and a blue-and-white Medici porcelain dish made around 1570-80 was sold for F 8.8 million, a new record for European porcelain. (GERALDINE NORMAN)

BOOKS

      The market for antiquarian books emerged from recession during 1993-94, but overall prices were flat, especially for major rarities. The most extraordinary transaction of the year was the exchange of roughly half a Persian manuscript for a Willem de Kooning painting, both valued at about £ 13 million. The heirs of Arthur Houghton, a book collector, inherited the remaining pages of the Shah-nameh, the celebrated work of Persian epic poet Ferdowsi. Though Houghton had sold off the best of the 256 illustrations in his lifetime, 118 miniatures, over 500 pages of text, a magnificent 16th-century binding, and an illuminated rosette remained. The Iranian government traded de Kooning's nude "Woman III" for the manuscript.

      Two major collections of early printed books came on the market. Sotheby's sold some 400 books published before 1500 from the famous library of the Fürstenberg princes at Donaueschingen in southern Germany for £3.2 million, and a top price of £221,500 was paid for a tiny block book of c. 1465 titled The Art of Dying. Christie's sold a selection from the collection of Beriah Botfield (1807-63) for £ 3.8 million. Beres, a Paris dealer, paid a record £ 260,000 for a superb copy of Pierre Joseph Redouté's Les Roses, while the first Bible published in English—Miles Coverdale's translation printed in Antwerp in 1535—made £ 106,000. The British Library reportedly paid £ 1 million for one of the only two remaining copies of the New Testament translated by William Tyndale and published in 1526. A letter written by Abraham Lincoln sold for $728,500 at Christie's, and one by George Washington made a record $635,000 at Sotheby's. The Forbes family paid $321,500 for a map prepared by the lead pilot in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

      Children's books enjoyed buoyant sales, reflecting bulk buying by a single U.S. collector, Lloyd Cotsen. A first edition of Beatrix Potter's The Tale of Peter Rabbit commanded £ 63,250, and a pristine copy of the first Rupert bear annual, the 1936 New Adventures of Rupert, made £ 1,610.

      The best collection of scientific books on the market for over 20 years, formed by Robert S. Dunham (1906-91), sparked fierce competition, with Newton's Principia Mathematica (1687) making $211,500 and Copernicus' De revolutionibus (1543) fetching $151,000. A record auction price, $30.8 million, for a manuscript was paid by Bill Gates of Microsoft Corp. for a notebook of Leonardo da Vinci's.

      The sale of the last private copy of William Blake's Jerusalem was sold at Christie's for £617,500. Sotheby's sold both a rediscovered notebook containing the only known keyboard music written by Henry Purcell for £ 276,500 and the library of British double agent Kim Philby for £152,628. (GERALDINE NORMAN)

PHILATELY

      In 1994 the worldwide stamp market enjoyed brisk sales of both major single stamps and important, but not always large, collections. Postal authorities continued efforts to attract adolescent collectors, and the International Federation of Stamp Dealers' Associations instituted a new annual award, the Golden Globe, which honoured the national post office considered by the international stamp trade to have done the most to promote philately. The first award was bestowed on Britain's Royal Mail, with the U.S. Postal Service and the Australian Post Office close runners-up. An important factor in the Royal Mail's success was its reorganized Collectors' Club (the former Stamp Bug Club), which raised its membership to 70,000.

      A new world record for a single philatelic item was established by David Feldman S.A. at the November 1993 auction in Zürich, Switz., of the Hiroyuki Kanai collection of classic Mauritius stamps. An 1847 cover addressed to a wine merchant in Bordeaux, France, the only known cover to bear both the 1d. red and the 2d. blue of the "Post Office" issue, made Sw F 5,750,000 ($3,840,000). A cover enclosing an invitation to the Government House ball from Lady Gomm, wife of the governor of Mauritius, fetched Sw F 1,610,000. Ian Ray's specialized collection of the Stock Exchange forgeries of the British Victorian 1s. green was sold intact for £ 57,000 by Sotheby's (London), and a miscellany of British postal history made £7,000 (estimate, £2,700). Sotheby's first stamp sale in Hong Kong, part of the firm's 250th anniversary celebrations (see Sidebar (ANTIQUES AND COLLECTIBLES: Sotheby's Birthday )), included an 1883 Chinese 3-candarins red showing the error of an additional figure "3," a hitherto unknown variety. The stamp, which was found in a schoolboy's collection and estimated at HK$15,000, sold for HK$69,000 (approximately $9,000).

      Phillips (London) marked its centenary as philatelic auctioneers with an outstanding sale of British stamps and postal history totaling £431,579; a first-day cover of the 1840 1d. black commanded £ 15,645. A Perkins Bacon archive document, bearing 20 examples of the 1840 "Rainbow" cancellation trials, brought £ 28,000. Phillips also sold Gordon Latto's British Commonwealth collection, with exceptional proofs and essays. The total sale amounted to £157,393, including £6,200 for a composite die proof of the 5s., 10s., and 20s. Australian Kangaroo (1913), valued before the sale at £1,000. Greg Manning Auctions Inc. of Montville, N.J., specialists in handling dealer stocks and accumulations, raised $3,618,000 in its record-breaking sale in June. A very successful international exhibition was held in Seoul, South Korea, under the patronage of the Fédération Internationale de Philatélie and a regional international exhibition in Hong Kong sponsored by the Federation of Inter-Asian Philately. The latter, four-day, event drew over 200,000 visitors.

      Stanley Gibbons Ltd., London, acquired the bankrupt Bristol-based business of Urch Harris & Co. Ltd. for a reported £ 1 million and saved the firm's worldwide new-issue service. The Association of British Philatelic Societies was formally established on Jan. 1, 1994, replacing the defunct British Philatelic Federation. The annual congress was held in September at Chelmsford, Essex. Three prominent collectors signed the Roll of Distinguished Philatelists: Wolfgang C. Hellrigl of Italy, a leading expert on the stamps and postal history of Nepal; Juan Santa Maria of Colombia, an authority on Colombian philately; and Brig. Borje Carl-Gustav Wallberg of Sweden, a student of Far Eastern philately. (KENNETH F. CHAPMAN)

NUMISMATICS

      In July 1994 U.S. Treasury officials announced that the world's best-known currency, the U.S. “greenback,” would be restyled in an attempt to prevent counterfeiting on high-tech equipment. The new money likely would include off-centre portraits, watermark images, and colour-shifting inks but would retain the size and feel of existing notes. The $100 bills, the denomination most favoured by counterfeiters, would be redesigned and introduced first, probably by 1996. Several other nations, including Belgium, Canada, France, Japan, and the U.K., produced currency with high-tech antiforgery devices. The Reserve Bank of Australia circulated $5, $10, and $20 notes made of plastic.

      The U.S. Mint tried to keep up with increasing demand for U.S. coinage fueled by an improving economy. Merchants in several states reported spot shortages of one-cent coins, prompting the government to boost its 1994 mintage goal to at least 19 billion coins from the 15.8 billion made in 1993. One-cent pieces accounted for about 75% of the total. The U.S. Mint also worked on six commemorative coin programs authorized by Congress, including three coin types marking the 1994 World Cup soccer games played in nine U.S. cities. Several countries sold commemoratives honouring heroes or important events of World War II, notably the D-Day invasion of France on June 6, 1944.

      U.S. Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen called for a moratorium on the passage of new commemorative coin programs after several lawmakers introduced proposals in Congress. Collectors also complained that the market was saturated. In March, Mary Ellen Withrow became the 40th U.S. treasurer, with responsibility for overseeing the Bureau of Engraving and Printing (BEP) and the U.S. Mint. By midyear, series 1993 Federal Reserve notes with the facsimile signatures of Bentsen and Withrow had begun to circulate. Meanwhile, a BEP employee was arrested in June in connection with the theft of $1.7 million in $100 notes from the BEP facility in Washington, D.C.

      Sales of investment-grade bullion coins slumped in the first half of 1994 as precious-metal prices remained static. In 1993 the U.S. American Eagle ranked as the world's most popular gold bullion coin (514,000 troy ounces sold) and silver bullion coin (5.9 million troy ounces sold). South Africa marketed its Krugerrand in the U.S. and elsewhere following the South African all-race elections in April. From the mid-1980s until 1991, several nations had banned its importation to protest South Africa's apartheid policy.

      Almost all of the former Soviet republics issued their own money, often in large denominations to keep up with inflation. Ukraine circulated a 100,000-karbovanets coupon, and Lithuania printed litas-denominated notes. On July 1 Brazil introduced the real—its sixth currency in a decade—and pegged it to the U.S. dollar. The move greatly reduced Brazil's hyperinflation, which had been around 45% a month.

      U.S. rare-coin prices slipped 0.5% in the 12 months ended August 31, according to a Coin World survey that monitored nearly 17,000 coin values. One of 15 known 1804 U.S. silver dollars, the Dexter specimen, reportedly traded hands in a private sale for more than $575,000. Merrill Lynch & Co. announced that 399 coins costing $3.3 million were missing from the NFA World Coin Fund limited partnership. In August Merrill said it would reimburse investors in the NFA fund for their initial purchase price and likewise would pay investors in its two other rare-coin partnerships, both of which had fallen in value. The moves cost Merrill up to $30 million. (ROGER BOYE)

      This updates the article coin.

ANTIQUES AND COLLECTIBLES

      In 1994 such once-ignored "collectibles" as film memorabilia, advertising, bottles, and toys were featured at special auctions. The objects that interested most collectors and buyers were found, however, in shops, shows, flea markets, and garage sales and included cookie jars, Pez candy dispensers, bubble bath containers, Beatles memorabilia, artifacts used in spaceflight, gambling devices, toys and games, animation cels, advertising materials, and vintage clothing.

      The biggest news in collectibles, however, was in sports. The baseball card market was returned to the collector as investment-oriented buyers turned to other items. Rarities still sold well, but common cards lost value. Golf clubs, baseball jerseys, baseball mitts, and player-endorsed advertisements sold for higher-than-expected prices. Babe Ruth's 1921 bat set a record at $63,000. Carved wooden duck calls dating from the early 1900s set several record prices; the highest was $16,500 for a Victor Glodo checkered call.

      Buyers paid sizable amounts for the rarest pieces of 18th-century American and English furniture but found many bargains for middle-market examples. The sale of an important Pennsylvania German collection fetched strong prices, including $43,700 for a painted poplar trinket chest. At the auction of the Nina Fletcher and Bertram K. Little collection of folk art, a curly maple dressing table and box brought $31,050. Though sales of ordinary "country" furniture lagged, Anglo-Indian furniture was rediscovered, Arts and Crafts furniture held steady, and Eclectic Revival Victorian pieces rose in price. The biggest surge of interest was in '50s furniture, notably styles lumped under the term Modernism. Renewed interest in the period also spurred prices for '50s pottery, glass, jewelry, silver, paintings, and bicycles.

      Most 19th-century glass sold at average to lower prices, yet a Mt. Washington acid peachblow tankard pitcher decorated with flowers and a verse was auctioned at a record $26,950. Several important bottle collections were sold, and a dark amber Jenny Lind calabash flask sold for a record $12,430. Italian glass by name designers of the 1930s-'50s also increased in price. Depression glass prices remained steady, while the more formal glassware of the period, such as Heisey and Fostoria, went up slightly. Common Carnival glass patterns dropped in value, but rarities remained high.

      The 19th-century English dinnerware and spatterware made for the American market found new competition from newer pieces, which brought high prices. Collectors also paid handsomely for Art Deco pieces by Clarice Cliff of England. A 20th-century Beswick figure made in England showing the Beatrix Potter character of the Duchess sold for a record $2,590, and a set of four Disney-character-head vases made in the '60s brought $2,000.

      Entertainment memorabilia brought exceptional prices. The Academy Award won by Vivien Leigh for her role in Gone with the Wind (1939) sold for $563,500. The corset worn in a 1990 concert by singer Madonna auctioned for $18,150, a record for both Madonna clothing and for any corset. Elvis Presley's signed 1973 American Express card was auctioned for $41,400. Credit cards and telephone cards joined the ranks of collectibles, while animation cels and original comic art continued to set records. A Walt Disney storyboard for When the Cat's Away (1929) sold for $55,200. The original art from the March 1944 Amazing Stories brought $25,300.

      Toys continued to sell well; a 1932 cast-iron Arcade Checker cab sold for $68,200. Dolls continued to rise in price. The Kammer & Reinhardt blue-eyed, strawberry-blond schoolgirl doll set a record at $282,750. A one-of-a-kind G.I. Joe fighter-pilot action figure sold for a record $5,750, and a Madame Alexander doll in the image of film star Kathryn Grayson brought $10,400. The 1908 stuffed blue Steiff teddy bear "Elliot" sold for $74,000. Glass marbles of the '20s went for up to $6,000 each.

      Advertising collectibles, popular for over 25 years, continued to sell. Rare tobacco tins, labeled perfume bottles, talcum powder tins, and automobile related pieces found new collectors. An Aerio Gas Globe used in the '40s by the Gregory (N.D.) Independent Oil Co. sold for $9,350, a record price for the glass top of a gas pump. Labels for cigar boxes, fruit crates, or beer bottles rose in price. Lithographed tin signs commanded high prices, while paper signs made price strides. An Aunt Jemima die-cut hanging six-part paper sign showing pancakes and boxes sold for $5,170. (RALPH AND TERRY KOVEL)

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